How To Realize Your Dream Retirement Overseas

How To Retire Overseas

In my 30 years of traveling the world and covering the retire overseas beat, I’ve met people from all walks of life who have carved out new lives for themselves in places that fit their own ideas of paradise.

Some of them single… some married.

Some in their 30s… others in their 80s.

Some with health issues… others with young kids they needed to raise (and put through school).

Some looking to start a business… others looking to wind down and enjoy more free time.

Some looking for the bustle of city life… others looking to escape to the beach or a tranquil country retreat.

If you think you need to fit some special criteria to make the idea of living or retiring overseas make sense, think again. There’s no such thing as a perfect retire overseas candidate.

To realize the dream you have of a better life overseas, all you need is a spirit of adventure and then (the tough part) the dedication to follow through and just show up. Just take the leap.

When Alice dreamed of leaving Cleveland, Ohio, behind for a new life overseas, she had no intention of lowering her standard of living. A widow for 20 years, she’d worked all her life to enjoy certain luxuries and was unwilling to give them up. A few days into her visit to Cuenca, Ecuador, Alice knew she’d found her new home.

Today, she rents a three-story, single-family home in town (for US$350 a month) and has furnished it to a standard that would have been beyond her means back home. And, because her day-to-day living costs are so low, she’s able to afford all the little luxuries that she enjoys… like her weekly manicure for US$8… and her monthly facial for US$25. Best of all, Alice is surrounded by Ecuadorian neighbors who look out for her. She’s made new friends and feels perfectly safe in her new community.

Meanwhile, Darrell and Amy from Charlotte, North Carolina, have reinvented themselves in Granada, Nicaragua. Amy has set up her art studio and gallery and teaches five days a week. With more free time, Darrell’s discovered a new love of writing—he’s also busy with the local library foundation, the embassy, and a website to help other expats move to Nicaragua.

The couple lives in a 150-year-old colonial home. They play golf. They go to occasional concerts and plays. They keep two cars and have a maid. It’s a pretty good life… and it only costs them about US$2,000 a month.

And Shelley and Grant, also from North Carolina, found their paradise in Glengarriff, County Cork, Ireland—an area with its own unique, almost subtropical microclimate. The three-bedroom house they rent (for US$620 a month) is in the woods just beside a nature reserve. They don’t see or hear traffic, and yet a five-minute walk delivers them to the door of any of a number of delightful pubs where they’re treated to live, traditional Irish music at least once a week. They’re also looking forward to converting a small shed on the property into a ceramics studio.

Again, these are ordinary people, just like you, who once stood just as you do now, clinging to a dream of something better. But, scary as the prospect seemed, they finally took the leap to go out, find the place of their dreams, and move right in.

There’s nothing stopping you from doing the same.

The good news is that however you plan to spend your days overseas, there’s a place to suit you (and, likely, more than one). The challenge is finding that one special place that you’d like to call home.

I’d like to help you find your dream retirement overseas—and do it with minimum hassle—by introducing you to the top havens in the world that you should consider and, at the same time, connecting you to the right people who can make it all happen.

If you’re ready to take action and nail down your plans for a freer, richer, more affordable, and more fulfilling life overseas—and to realize it the easiest way possible—then you need to do just one thing today:

The Retire Overseas Conference is the biggest event on my conference calendar, the one where I gather my far-flung team of experts and friends to showcase all our top retirement havens (21 of them this year) under one roof… bringing you the world in one room.

My experts and I have traveled far and wide. We’ve rented, bought, and sold homes. We’ve started businesses, educated children, used hospital services, gone through residency red tape, dealt with local authorities. When we recommend a place, we’re confident it’s a place that other expats, like you, would enjoy.

And we tell the whole story—”warts and all,” as we like to say.

All in an effort to help make your move overseas as smooth and as efficient as possible. We want you to avoid all of our many, many mistakes. That’s the straightforward agenda for our three-and-a-half days together in Orlando this fall.

At our fifth annual Retire Overseas Conference, we’d like to steer you toward the opportunities that make the most sense for you and then show you exactly how to set yourself up for a new start overseas.

This is the only event of its kind, conceived to help you consider, compare, and contrast all the world’s top options at one time. It’s also the only event we will hold in the United States in 2015.

Kathleen Peddicord

P.S. One of the biggest benefits of our annual Retire Overseas Conference is the great company you’ll meet. In the room with us for these three-and-a-half days, you’re able to mingle not only with our experts, expats, and correspondents but also with your fellow attendees, like-minded adventurers looking to make a move… just like you.

Maybe some of these people will wind up being your neighbors abroad… or maybe some of you will end up doing business together. I know that many of you will establish new friendships; I’ve seen it time after time, over the years.

You might even find romance. Lief and I met at a conference I hosted in Ireland years ago.

I can’t urge you strongly enough to take this chance. Join us in Orlando to launch what I promise will be the adventure of your lifetime.

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.